


Princely Perceptions

by CelestialArcadia



Category: Good Omens (TV)
Genre: Character Study, Gen, Mentioned Crowley (Good Omens), No Dialogue, Oh Yuck! There's Demons in My Zine (Good Omens), POV Beelzebub (Good Omens), POV Third Person Limited, Post-Good Omens, They/Them Pronouns for Beelzebub (Good Omens)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-31
Updated: 2020-08-31
Packaged: 2021-03-06 23:21:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 851
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26217064
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CelestialArcadia/pseuds/CelestialArcadia
Summary: During a rare quiet moment in post-Notpocalyptic Hell, Lord Beelzebub ruminates on how things have come to this point.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 11
Collections: Ixnael’s Recommendations, Ixnael’s SFW corner, Oh Yuck! There's Demons In My Zine!





	Princely Perceptions

**Author's Note:**

> Hello! This is my piece for Oh Yuck! There's Demons in My Zine. This is the first zine I've been a part of to go to print, and it's an honor to have my work included alongside that of so many excellent writers and artists. This is admittedly quite a bit different from what I usually write for this fandom (in a lot of ways), but I hope that people enjoy it.

Beelzebub smiles as they recline on their throne. Both chair and room are uncomfortable, but there's nowhere else they'd rather be. Hell is dank and dirty and awful and generally not a good place, and it is _theirs_. And they’ll be blessed if they’ll let _anyone_ take that away from them. They even dislike temporarily heading up to Earth for business—not because they _enjoy_ Hell’s squalor, it wouldn’t be Hell if it were _pleasant_ —but because any time away from their domain is time that someone could use to undermine their authority. To sow dissent. To take away that which is rightfully Beelzebub’s.

(Also, one of the few times Beelzebub _couldn’t_ delegate an Earth visit to someone else, they ended up being summoned by a nearby cult. By the time the light of the summoning circle had died, so had the cultists. The experience of having control of their own body taken away from them was so genuinely harrowing to Beelzebub that they still refuse to talk about it—the official story is that they were simply feeling particularly slothful that day and decided to take a nap instead of doing their princely duties. If any other demons have felt the official story to be lacking, then those demons have been smart enough not to say anything about it aloud.)

In hindsight, Beelzebub...no, they don't _regret_ delegating so much Earth business to Crowley. Demons don't feel regret, and they definitely don't feel regret for actions which inconvenienced others.

So Beelzebub doesn't regret anything, but they do _recognize_ that they had a weakness operating right under their nose for thousands of years.

And that recognition makes Beelzebub's blood boil white-hot in their veins.

They aren't smiling anymore. An Eric sent as a messenger sees their expression and wisely shuffles away instead. (It's a shame, Beelzebub thinks. They could use the distraction, and their supply of disposable demons is hardly _low_.)

Like all demons, Beelzebub retains few memories of their time as an angel. Those memories are scattershot and tend towards the indistinct; trying to recall them is like seeing something out of the corner of your eye, turning to face it, and seeing nothing.

Over and over and over again.

But you always look, because it might be something this time. (It never is.)

Also like all demons, Beelzebub does not know what their name was before they fell. In the past, that was something that hurt them: the knowledge that the self they and everyone else had known was _gone_ , that nobody knew who they were any longer, that nobody would _ever_ know who that angel was again. Whatever celestial mechanism went through the aether when an angel fell made sure of that. Their name was stripped out of existence, not only from their own memory but from the memories of everyone they'd ever encountered or who had even known of their existence. The places in their memories where their name would have been were replaced with a void emptier than silence.

But it has been a very, very long time since Beelzebub fell. They’ve had time to process it. Time to come to terms. Time to make sense of it all. Time to realize the truth of what had happened. Time for Beelzebub to take the void and fill it with their true self, to fill it with _their_ name, not the name of some useless angel who didn't even exist anymore, not a name given to them but a name they _chose_.

Did Heaven know what they were doing when they kicked out the lowly angel who would become Lord Beelzebub, Prince of Hell? No, of course not. They had no idea. The angels never would have chucked them away if they had known how much power that fallen angel would acquire in the process.

The angel who would become Beelzebub was _weak_. They can’t remember much, but they’re absolutely certain of that fact. They were low-ranking, given the worst tasks, demeaned by their higher-ups in the angelic hierarchy. They had nothing in the way of positive memories of Heaven. Being damned was the best thing that could have happened to them.

Not that Beelzebub is _grateful_ to Heaven. They couldn’t be. The whole idea of gratitude is offensive to them. It’s a virtue. Maybe not one of _the_ Virtues, but a virtue nonetheless.

Beelzebub knows, though, that they would not exist if Heaven did not exist. Not because they used to be an angel—it has been a very long time since they have considered that being to be _them_ in any meaningful way—but because that angel's fall brought them into existence. Hell would be a very different place if that fall had never happened.

They stand up. Beelzebub has had enough self-reflection for a whole decade, they think. It's unbecoming, they think, for the prince of Hell to spend too much time ruminating.

Especially after the recent...incident...with the holy water.

Someone might get the idea that Lord Beelzebub doesn't know what they're doing.

And _that_ would be the biggest weakness of all.


End file.
